Background

SSE is aware that historical and modern-day cultural biases and lack of diversity in an applicant pool may lead to biases in the allocation of grants, prizes, and awards. Beginning with the 2020 Graduate Research Excellence Grant competitions, SSE requested voluntary demographic information from award applicants in an effort to address bias and promote equity in awarding across multiple axes of diversity.

Answering demographic questions was voluntary—each question was required but included a “Prefer not to say” option. Answers to the demographic questions were not available to the evaluation committee during the first step of the evaluation process—the scoring and ranking of application materials (described here). The demographic data were used to assess the diversity of the applicant pool and the differences between the composition of the applicant pool and the recipient population. 

We do not yet have demographic data on our membership, and so were unable to assess differences between the diversity of the applicant pool or recipient population and our total membership during this round of awards. The SSE Diversity Committee is discussing gathering demographic data on the membership as well as efforts to increase award proposals from underrepresented groups. This year, in an effort to assist students with less experience submitting proposals, we provided samples of previously funded proposals to applicants.

Evaluation Process & Diversity Assessment

In the 2020 GREG - R.C. Lewontin Early Award competition, the R.C. Lewontin Early Award Committee received 210 applications. Each application was assigned to two evaluators from the evaluation committee, who scored the applications on five criteria (see Evaluation Criteria). All application scores were standardized within evaluators to account for scoring variation among evaluators, then ranked across the entire pool of applications. The top-ranked applications were sent into a second round of evaluation with three evaluators each. 

The SSE Diversity Committee assessed the percentage of applicants from different institution locations and types, as well as the responses to six demographic questions (see tables below). The highest-ranked applications from under-represented areas were selected for the second round of evaluation. Additional highly ranked applications selected by the Diversity Committee made the demographics of the recipients more representative of the applicant pool (see tables below).

34 applications were sent into the second round of evaluation; 23 applications were selected as recipients. 

DATA PRIVACY STATEMENT: Upon completion of each competition, answers to demographic questions were anonymized and disassociated with all identifying information. Anonymized responses will be archived in order to analyze the composition of applicant pools over time. 

Funding Sources

The GREG R.C. Lewontin Award budget allowed for funding of 20 applications. Three additional grants were funded by donations to the George W. Gilchrist Student Support Fund, donations to the GREG awards fund, and funds from the SSE President’s discretionary annual budget allocation.

2020 Applicant Institution Data:

*US institutions are classified as R1 or Non-R1 by their research activity according to The Carnegie Classification of Institutions in Higher Education.  All institutions outside the US are included in the International category here.

 

2020 Applicant Demographic Data: